


The Last of the Lost

by entanglednow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Disturbing Themes, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-03-31
Packaged: 2018-01-17 16:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1394608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's easy to make excuses when you forget that you're a monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last of the Lost

**Author's Note:**

> The third story in the challenge I'm doing with GoldenUsagi to write a story every month where Sherlock is something supernatural/mythical. This is my story for March. But for another spin on the idea you should have a look at [Giving In To Contradictions](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1394626) as well.

John's not sure what time it is when he's dragged rudely out of sleep. But it doesn't feel like he went to bed that long ago. It only takes him a second to realise - or should that be to deduce - what it was that had woken him up. He immediately sighs into the pillow.

If this were the first time, he'd probably be more startled, or annoyed, or scandalised. He'd probably bother sitting up at the very least. But this isn't the first time. This isn't even the fifth time. So he just stays where he is, and hopes that his sprawled body demonstrates a little of his annoyance.

There's a long shape in the doorway, mostly in shadow, but tall enough and real enough for him to recognise it as something other than a strange remnant from a nightmare. Narrowed in where Sherlock has his arms curled round himself, the thin material of his dressing gown pulled tight enough to twist at the seams. He's oddly still, compared to his usual restless self, but there's something forced about it, something contained. Though, John has to admit to himself, it's no weirder than any of Sherlock's other quirks. The fact that he looks as if he might explode into a pile of nerves and bone fragments if John so much as touches him, that's just par for the course.

John wonders whether Sherlock knows he's awake. He wonders whether Sherlock cares that he's awake. There's a distinct possibility that Sherlock just needs someone to stare at while he's thinking. A sounding board for his over-loud brain thoughts. Someone he can occasionally throw ideas at, then dismiss when they don't reply. Unconsciousness doesn't seem to deter him from his staring in any way. John shouldn't be surprised since he's seen the man muttering at corpses before. If anything Sherlock seems more annoyed once John makes it obvious that he's awake, as if breaking his train of thought by demanding him out of his bedroom is in some way unreasonable. Just one of the many and varied unreasonable demands Sherlock accuses John of making on a daily basis.

" _Sherlock_." John doesn't even bother to lift his head, he lets his voice mumble out at almost speaking volume, frustration and objection half muffled in the pillow. "Go away. I'm not awake enough to help you untangle whatever mess you've made of your thoughts. Go talk to the skull, and stop lurking in my bedroom doorway. Stop lurking in general."

Sherlock exhales, frustration or impatience, mumbles something John doesn't catch, because he's already hauled the pillow over his head. John can't hear any of the words, but he can extrapolate from the noise that they exist, probably very persuasive ones, knowing Sherlock. They're currently wasted on John. He's too tired for arguments as to why he should let Sherlock watch him sleep. He worries that Sherlock will make it sound perfectly sensible, and he can't cope with that in the middle of the night.

He doesn't even care if it's for very important data. He doesn't care if criminals will be caught thanks to his sacrifice. He's in that sort of mood.

"I don't care, _I don't care_ , I refuse to be dragged into an adventure this close to the last one, and before the sun's even up." John waits for a beat, and then twists around to see if Sherlock's gone. All he can see from this angle is the light from the open doorway, and shadowed snatches of the rest of the flat. "I swear you really didn't get told 'no' enough as a child."

John unfolds the pillow from around his head, pushes his face back into it, and tries to reclaim whatever sleep the world thinks is due him. Which somehow never seems to be enough these days.

\---

John's not the only one feeling less than his best the next morning, judging by his first look at Sherlock.

"You look like hell," John tells him, from over a cup of tea with no milk in it. He's not pleased about there being no milk in it. He's not sure where all the milk's gone, but he's betting on some sort of midnight experiment, probably to punish John for kicking him out of his room in the middle of the night. The lack of milk definitely feels like punishment. "Did you get any sleep at all?"

Sherlock's eyes are so pale they look white this morning, pupils tiny, and his skin's the colour of chalk. He's folded over the table, surrounded by papers that he looks as if he got bored of reading halfway through. Either that or he just didn't have the energy for it. His wrists and fingers look so sharply thin that John swears he could outline all the veins. He knows Sherlock didn't look this bad yesterday. All the irritation drains out of him, and he sinks into the chair on the other side of the table.

"Sherlock?"

Sherlock blinks at him, like he hadn't heard the question.

"Sleep," John tries again. "Did you have the pleasure of its company last night?"

Sherlock doesn't speak but shakes his head instead, one slow twist and jerk, though he does follow it with some sort of frustrated exhaling noise, proving that he's not a member of the living dead. Not that Sherlock would abide being a zombie, having his brain rotting away.

"Or maybe I should be asking whether you're eating instead, I swear that shirt fit you yesterday. We don't have anything at the moment, do we? No cases you've forgotten to tell me about? Or you've purposefully not told me about. You know I hate that."

"No, nothing you need to worry about," Sherlock says, picking through the pages of the topmost paper with an utter lack of enthusiasm. He seems to give up after a couple, and lets his hand drop.

"I can't for the life of me tell whether that answered my question or not," John admits. Sherlock's brain never seems to shut down, even if it looks like it'd be a effort to put his coat on. John's rethinking the whole zombie thing. "You'd probably keep going if your heart stopped, wouldn't you? Just keep on solving crime until your brain dried up."

Sherlock doesn't react. Doesn't make any sort of verbal protest, or cutting remark about how long it took a brain to dehydrate. Even his usual, harassed look is pinched at the edges. John's a little tempted to poke him to see if he's fallen asleep with his eyes open - then immediately feels bad about it. He reaches across the table and wraps a hand round Sherlock's thin wrist. The skin's warmer than he's expecting.

"You really should get some sleep. I worry about you, you know, You can't possibly get up to anything productive looking like that."

Sherlock stares at John's hand until it slips free, then exhales what sounds like all the air in his lungs.

"Perhaps I will later," he says. "I suppose it's not sensible to let the engine run dry." John suspects Sherlock's just appeasing him. He has no intention of doing anything other than dashing around London, burning whatever fuel reserves he has left. John would worry more, but it's a strange cycle he's witnessed more than once, which only ever seems to skirt the edge of self-destruction.

In a few days Sherlock will be comatose on the sofa, cheeks flushed, hair in a million directions, sleeping off some sort of triumph.

Then the whole bloody thing will start again.

\---

When John gets back from the shops, replacing a pair of shoes ruined by a race through the London Underground, Sherlock has moved to the armchair, still looking like a fierce, starved vulture. But at least this time he looks animated. Though the reason for that is in the other armchair, umbrella held loosely in one hand. Mycroft has a disturbing habit of making the human art of sitting look like something that can be studied, and perfected. It doesn't look comfortable, but there's something about how he looks poised to instantly be somewhere else, if he wanted to. John suspects this is one of the reasons they have so many deep armchairs. It's hard to look productive in one. It's hard to look like you could get out of one in a hurry.

He nods to Mycroft, who offers a raised eyebrow in his direction and something that someone, in some office, in a dark basement, might perhaps file under 'a smile.'

"You're looking wan," Mycroft tells Sherlock, John suspects not for the first time. Though he can tell by the stress Mycroft puts on the word that it isn't the one he was originally going to use. "Perhaps it's time we joined each other for -"

"Not interested," Sherlock says, and it's such a blatant dismissal. Mycroft sighs like he expected no different.

"You know what will happen if you neglect yourself," Mycroft says. There's nothing overly threatening in the words, that John can detect, but Sherlock stiffens as if Mycroft had touched a very obvious nerve. When he raises his eyes to look at his brother there's a very obvious note of anger in his expression.

"Don't lecture me about neglect, Mycroft. We both know I'm more capable of a reckless lifestyle than you are."

Mycroft doesn't move, doesn't even flinch, but judging by Sherlock's short, hard little nod of acknowledgment a second later, he's apparently scored a point.

The conversation clearly has layers that there's no way John can unravel. That he's almost certainly not supposed to. So he takes his bag upstairs, tosses the shoe box on the bed and frowns at the wall. Then he very slowly and quietly stands up, and shuffles back across the room. If he stands by the door he can still just about make out their conversation. The fact that he doesn't seem the type to listen in to other people's conversations probably works in his favour. For all his talk of deductions being the only reliable evidence Sherlock still tends to assume things about people.

" - your appetites, when you're living with one," Mycroft finishes. He sounds frustrated, as if there's something he doesn't understand. John doesn't think it's something that happens often.

"I've never crossed the threshold," Sherlock says, slowly, purposefully, as if that matters in some way.

"Details and you know it." Mycroft sounds disappointed. "A fine line that you're in danger of finding yourself over without being aware of it."

Sherlock's silence sounds offended, though he doesn't say anything for almost a minute.

"He's not -" Sherlock stops, as if he can't, or as if he refuses to finish that sentence.

John finds himself unconsciously leaning closer to the half-shut door, straining for the end of that thought.

"I know he's not," Mycroft says, as if he heard the words anyway. Something in the way he says them makes John think he's put all the pieces he needed together. "I know you don't intend him to be, and I can understand your desire to...remove him from the category. Don't make that a lie you tell yourself. Biology is, after all, our mistress as well."

There's a much longer silence then, before John eventually hears the front door close, and he's left sitting on the bed, holding a shoe box, and wondering if there's a conversation they need to have. One they've awkwardly had before, only this time perhaps they needed to finish it?

\---

For all that Sherlock seems to be constantly around when you don't want him to be, he's never available when you actually do want to talk to him. Either that or he's avoiding John on purpose, for some strange and no-doubt complicated reason of his own. Though he seems to have found time to take care of himself at least, in the week following his strange conversation with his brother. He looks more like an actual person the next time John sees him, all hectic colour in his cheeks, and frighteningly invasive eyes.

John tries to catch him going out of the flat, only to be whirlwinded into his own coat and gloves, and dragged out to investigate ten different fish and chip shops, for some indefinable reason. Not that Sherlock lets them stop long enough to bloody eat anything. No matter how much noise his stomach makes on their long and seemingly pointless journey.

Then they're off after a kidnapped heiress, struggling to catch up while Sherlock unravels the impossible. But John's always dragged along in his wake, like he belongs there, like Sherlock has carved out space for him, and has no intention of letting anyone else fill it. John thinks he should feel embarrassed about how ludicrous and fanciful that sounds. But he's too old to lie to himself, too old to do anything other than make short, token protests, while he follows Sherlock wherever he goes.

John forgets, or almost forgets, that he means to make Sherlock have that conversation. He sets it to the back of his mind, with all the other clutter he feels certain he'll have to ask Sherlock about one day. That they'll talk about one day, or that he'll talk about, and Sherlock will be a participant for at the very least, hopefully an active one.

There's an endless stream of cases, a tumble of incidents both embarrassing and triumphant. It's a strange way to live a life, he supposes. But they're saving people, and Sherlock needs him, and John wouldn't miss it for the world. Even if it's probably going to kill him.

\---

He remembers that thought three months later. He remembers it, but he doesn't regret it. Even if it turns out to be true, depressingly, tragically true.

Sherlock is following the evidence, following the brains behind the smuggling operation they've uncovered. John's supposed to keep watch outside while Sherlock investigates, bribes, or steals his way to the evidence. It usually amounts to him standing in the rain trying to look harmless, trying to look inconspicuous.

But not this time. This time the place has its own guard dog.

The man's bigger than him, and he has more training that John's expecting. Paranoid enough to have a combat knife, stupid enough to have a combat knife. But he knows how to use it. John hasn't had to fight for his life for a long time.

The bricks of the alley wall are rough, and they knock half the wind out of him, when he slams back into them. He has sense enough to keep his head forward, tucks for the next blow, and gets sliced across the arm for his trouble. His opponent can take a punch, and he protects his vulnerabilities, neck, eyes, armpits, groin. He's much better than John originally thought. Good enough that John knows that if he goes down he's probably not getting up again.

If he could just get one opening, just one opportunity. He grasps back at the smooth wall, for the loose brick he'd spotted when he hit.

John doesn't realise he's been stabbed until his chest starts to burn - but he feels it all the second time it happens. He feels his whole body spasm when it's ripped open. When it screams damage at him, stealing the energy from his limbs. His arm's already swinging - so when the knife comes up a third time he can't block it. He manages to smash the other man in the face, shards of brick and dust scattering down, and the man staggers, swaying, falling, mouth running blood.

John has a knife in his chest, and he's falling too.

Until, between one second and the next, he's sprawled awkwardly on the pavement, barely remembering the journey down. The knife is still in his chest, he can see the jutting handle, alien and inanimate where it's shoved inside him. He can't move, he can't reach up, can't put pressure on the wound, can't stop the bleeding. He's a doctor, he knows what that means, he knows what's going to happen, but he's still human. He still thinks - can't help thinking - disjointed, confused thoughts. He thinks it should hurt more than this, but instead it's just hard to breathe now, strangely cold. None of his body seems to work.

The man - the man who's killed him - staggers to his feet, coughing, smashed face streaked with blood, teeth red. He reaches down, picks up John's gun.

Then suddenly a pale hand grasps the man's throat from behind, tightens, makes his eyes flare wide. He's dragged back, out of John's vision, and now he can't see anything but the rain-wet alley wall. Trying to gasp out a name. Trying to warn Sherlock.

John can't see what's happening, but he can hear noises, rough, gasping, helpless.

"..ah," he manages, it's barely a breath.

The world is blotted out suddenly by the folded curve of Sherlock, pale in the sudden dark. John tries to reach for him, forgets that nothing works. Sherlock reaches for him instead, folds at the knees and covers him in shadow. There's pressure at his chest, he thinks he can feel it. The sharp curves of Sherlock's face are unreadable. He wraps a hand round the jutting end of the knife.

"Sh -" The rest of the word turns to air, a cough, or something close to it, soft and already breaking. He wants to warn him, to tell him not to, but it doesn't matter. The slow slide of blood-slippery blade leaving him feels like dying. He's making noise through his teeth, nothing that he's in charge of, animal noises. It's strange how he feels more pinned, more helpless, now that it's gone.

He hears it clatter to the pavement, rattle to a stop.

John manages another noise, wants so desperately for it to be words, because there's so much he wants to say to Sherlock. But it's too late. It's all too late. He's bleeding so much. He can feel it, he can feel himself bleeding out. Sherlock sighs, warm fingers sliding up his throat, curling tight.

"Hush, John," Sherlock says simply. John's heard those words before, so many times, but this time there are razors underneath.

The world goes warm at the edges, throbs like someone has shoved a hand inside him and _pulled_. The warmth turns to heat, twists. Sherlock leans down - blots out the sun. There's something wrong with John's head, something wrong with his eyes. Because the closer Sherlock gets the less real he looks, the angles of his face sharper, the stretch of his mouth wider. He leans close enough that John can feel the rush of his breath against his mouth and it burns. All the colour bleeds out of Sherlock's eyes, leaves them white. He looks jagged, and sharp, and beautiful. John wants to breathe him in.

Sherlock lets him, crushes their mouths together, and it's good, it's bliss - it's like being burned alive, his chest aches, but his skin's prickling under what feels like a thousand tiny electric shocks, hands twitching to life. He's suddenly clawing at the heavy material over Sherlock's shoulders, begging in mute, helpless ways against Sherlock's mouth, and it's like he's having pure energy forced down his throat. It hurts, and it's glorious, and he never, ever wants it to stop. What he's feeling goes beyond need, into something harder, something deeper, more visceral.  There aren't any words for this, and he'll do anything to keep it.

Until suddenly Sherlock's mouth is gone, the weight of him leaning away.

"No, God, please, don't stop, please." John tries to hang on, digs his nails in. But Sherlock just eases his hands away, like John has all the strength of a child - and suddenly John's head is clear. He's breathing cold air, chest aching like someone punched him there. But when he raises his hands to the bloody material of his shirt there's only tacky skin underneath, slightly too warm. He feels pummeled, and bereft, and just a little wrong, like someone has _rearranged_ him. For long seconds he's completely and utterly terrified.

"Do get up off the floor John," Sherlock says simply, he's putting his gloves back on, looking stark and strange again, angles like a ruffled bird. The creature that John would have flayed himself alive for is completely gone, and it's just Sherlock, impossible, irritating Sherlock, staring into the distance in his overly dramatic way. He looks thinner than he did a second ago, paler, drained. He looks half-starved again.

John can breathe again, he can move. That sudden, impossible terror drains away.

"What -"

Sherlock sighs.

"Please, John, just get up." There's a low tremor to his voice, something unsettled. Something vicious that he's carefully reining in. John's first instinct is to push it, to push the same way he always pushes him. But he still feels strange. The way Sherlock is avoiding looking at him now, taut and drawn, facing away from him. As if he hadn't just - John doesn't know what he'd done. Something he shouldn't have been able to do.

John can see around him from his new position, can see the body on the floor, where it's crumpled in its now oversized clothes, looking dry and twisted, like something pulled out of a sarcophagus. John's gun is still clenched in a small, shriveled hand.

Sherlock takes one step forward, blocking his view.

\---

Two hours later John's sitting in his armchair, mug of tea in the folded curve of his fingers. It's too hot, he can feel it burning all the way through his skin. He doesn't feel much like letting go of it any time soon though.

Sherlock's hovering, which has taken on a new and stranger flavour of threat than he'd ever thought it could. Sherlock looks exactly the same as he always has done. It should be reassuring, but John can't shake the feeling that he doesn't look like that at all.

"Tell me," John says simply. He manages firm, though if he squeezes his mug any harder he's going to be covered in shards of ceramic and hot beverage. "I expect you know all the questions I have right now, so I'd be very grateful if you could _answer some of them_." He clears his throat, he hadn't intended the last words to be so loud. But in his defence, in his bloody defence -

Jesus Christ.

Sherlock looks at him, and his lack of expression has never looked so alien.

"Different cultures have different names -"

" _Pick one_." John ignores the splash of tea, reins in his temper. Because he feels as if he's wandering near the edge of a cliff and he's trying desperately not to fall off.

Sherlock stops holding himself so tightly, surrenders, just a little.

"Incubus will suffice," he says stiffly.

John breathes out, that doesn't help, it doesn't help at all. He bites back some sort of protest that that's plainly impossible, that he can't possibly be...anything like that. His body laughs when he doesn't mean it to at all, a long, strange huff of air that sounds half way to hysterical.

"Jesus." He doesn't want to drink his tea any more, doesn't really want to hold it, but there's nowhere to put it down. "So - you're telling me that you're not human, you're actually a demon, that feeds off of people sexually, while they're sleeping."

It sounds so far past insane. John's hoping for an immediate denial. He's really hoping for one. But instead there's a long pause, while Sherlock seems to be debating what to say, what to admit to. How to explain.

"They don't have to be sleeping," he says at last. "And we don't usually kill people -"

"Is that supposed to make it better. Is it? To make you less terrifying? Because I felt what you did to me. I would have let you cut my fucking throat if you'd told me that's what you wanted." He stops, takes a deep breath. "I've never felt that before in my life, I didn't know I could want anything that much - you completely _owned me_. I felt that." He stops, swallows hard.

Sherlock looks guilty, and that's a new and strange expression on his face. Confused and unhappy enough to be genuine.

"I'm sorry," he says, and it sounds stiff, awkwardness layered over sincerity. "I didn't want to do that to you. I never intended - I could have made you forget that it happened." It's not a threat, John thinks he's making a point. He thinks that's supposed to make him feel better, that he remembers exactly what happened. "I still could, if that's what you wanted."

John squeezes his mug a little harder, until his fingertips are white.

"No, God no." John takes a minute to let that go through his head, about what it means. "Have you ever done that before...made me forget?" He's afraid of the answer to that question, but he has to ask.

Sherlock's face creases in a frown, something to it makes John think he's offended that John thinks so little of him. Which - considering which one of them just drained the life out of a man - John decides is a completely fair question.

"No." His face creases harder. "No," he says again, slightly more insistently.

"So everything you've told me is a lie. Because I honestly don't see how any of it could be true."

"I've lied to you as little as possible. I genuinely never intended this to be part of our relationship."

"The whole part where you're a demon?" John says with a nod. "All of that. Because of course that wasn't important. I knew you were odd, but I have to tell you that at no point did I suspect you weren't actually human. No matter what anyone else said. It turns out I should have listened all along. God." He gives in and puts the mug on the floor, scrubs both hands over his face until his eyes hurt.

When he opens them Sherlock seems to be trying his very best to keep his expression blank. But John can see the horrible tension. It's still undoubtedly Sherlock. Whatever else he is underneath. It's all stupidly painful, underneath what's starting to feel less like betrayal and more like a lack of trust. One of which is more easily mended than the other. Supernatural creatures notwithstanding.

John stares at him, breathes out. "I - thank you, for saving my life." It sounds awkward after the words that came before it. "I know I would have died if you hadn't...."

Sherlock sighs, audibly, moves a little closer. He's careful about it, but it looks like relief on his face.

"One of the few things I would never hesitate to do, John."

"How are you making me feel unreasonable about this?" John complains, because that seems entirely unfair. "You're the one that's a -" He can't say monster, he can't. Sherlock's a lot of things, but John doesn't think he's that.

"John." Sherlock comes forward a little more, crouches when John doesn't give any indication that he's going to...do anything. Which John isn't sure would do any good. He knows how strong Sherlock is now. "I've never done anything to you against your will. I would never -"

John gives him a wry look.

"Unless your life was at stake," Sherlock adds reluctantly.

"You want to though, don't you?" John understands suddenly. It's the sort of understanding which doesn't bring comfort but a strange sort of unsteadiness. "You come to my room in the middle of the night, and you watch me sleep, and you...think about it?"

Sherlock's eye twitches, mouth suddenly thinning out.

"I can control myself. The fact that I have genuine affection for you makes it easier."

"It's harder to eat people you like? Is that what you mean?"

Sherlock's mouth twists. John can tell he really doesn't want to answer that.

"Crudely put, but yes. You're not in any danger, I swear."

"So you do want to eat me, but you won't, because of our friendship?"

"Yes, though I think you just made it sound worse there." Sherlock looks annoyed, as if he has the right to be annoyed at John's phrasing right now. "There's a significant difference between...devouring someone whole, and simply feeding off of them."

"Suddenly the conversation I walked in on you having with Mycroft makes so much more sense - and he's one too, isn't he? I can't actually imagine Mycroft - no, you know what, I'm not going to picture that. For my own sanity. The eating habits of the modern incubus - Christ, to say nothing of the consent issues that your biology brings up."

Sherlock simply looks at him for half a minute.

"The choices are have a certain moral flexibility, or starve as a species," he says eventually.

John sighs again.

"Look, I need some time to - I just need to get this in my head. Could you go find some sort of experiment to do or something."

Sherlock looks hurt, and it's familiar, and real, and John feels a twinge of honest guilt. Guilt he's not entirely sure Sherlock deserves. But Sherlock reluctantly nods, then straightens and heads in the direction of his room. John stays in his armchair, wondering absently where his mug went.

He can still taste him, like cinnamon and metal, a livewire under the skin. Sherlock could have made him do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to. He understands that very clearly now. But, as far as John can tell, he's never used his own abilities on him. Sherlock's pulled, and cajoled, and used his intelligence and his arrogance, and John's own concern for his welfare - which he suddenly realises was probably a moot point. He doesn't have any reference points for supernatural beings, but he suspects they can't be shot like ordinary people. It's a thought which reassures John more than he even knows what to do with. No, Sherlock has never needed to use any sort of power on him. John's been his from the beginning.

But he thinks he liked his life better when it was an ordinary sort of mess.


End file.
